Parcham

Parcham was the moderate faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, formed in 1965. Led by Babrak Karmal, the Parcham faction opposed the Khalq faction of the PDPA, as Karmal argued that Afghanistan was too underdeveloped to achieve a Leninist workers' revolution; in contrast to the working-class Khalqists, the Parcham faction consisted of upper-class and middle-class socialists. The faction supported a gradual transition to communism instead of a rushed revolution, and it seized power in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1979 with the assistance of the Soviet Union. From 1979 to 1992, the Parcham faction ruled Afghanistan, and it transformed into the Watan Party of Afghanistan after the end of the communist state.